Preview Cosi Fan Tutte
Autumn kicks off for Opera North with a Mozart opera
Preview: Cosi Fan Tutte
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Opera North’s Autumn season has arrived, and, whilst there is no Wagner, as yet, on the horizon, the company is playing to its strengths with scheduled stagings of Mozart and Janacek. An erstwhile colleague, the then theatre correspondent at Leeds Guide, once told me he had had an interview with some outrageously OTT street drag artist called Cosy Fanny Tutti, an experience that had, forever more, clouded his evening every time he had gone to hear Mozart’s opera. Gentle reader, I must confess, his report alone has since had a similar effect on me. Mind you, the plot is perverse enough to warrant the distraction.
Two young Neapolitan officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, are persuaded by the cynical old bachelor, Don Alfonso, to test the fidelity of their fiancées, Fiordiligi and her sister Dorabella. Feigning departure on military service, they return disguised as Albanian noblemen. Each deflowers the other’s betrothed. Hastily, marriage contracts are drawn up. Suddenly, Don Alfonso announces the return of the soldiers; the Albanians vanish, and the terrified ladies feel obliged to confess everything to their original lovers.
It is the sort of silliness that should give wig powder a bad name, but Mozart and his librettist, Da Ponte, through their two-pronged genius, manage to breathe life into the dust. Though G B Shaw, and the 19th century in general, despaired of it, E J Dent, writing in 1947, thought it, “the best of all Da Ponte’s librettos and the most exquisite work of art among Mozart’s operas. It is as perfect a libretto as any composer could desire, though no composer but Mozart could ever do it justice.” The four lovers have discrete characterisations: the romantic, the realist, the easily tempted and the rock-steady protector. The parody and irony in Da Ponte’s treatment of their transition from monochromatic, unquestioning devotion to the riotous bloom of sexual adventure are handled with due seriousness by Mozart. Between the amorous exchanges and playful teasing of the lovers’ goodbye in Act I and the ardent emotional commitment of the wedding hymn in Act II, the composer maintains a fine illusionary balance between true feeling and subtle mockery, both characters and audience ultimately uncertain as to what is genuine and which devised artifice.
Dominating everything is Don Alfonso. The drama is of his making. He may have next to nothing to sing as a soloist, but he has his say in just about all the ensembles. And Cosi Fan Tutte (to be translated perhaps as “All Women Are Like That”) is, without parallel, the opera of ensembles - six duets, five trios, one quartet, two quintets, one sextet and two huge finales - all of them ravishing.
The main solo vocal challenge falls to Fiordiligi. The part was originally taken by Farrarese del Bene, Da Ponte’s mistress at the time. “Her voice was heavenly, her manner of singing quite new and exceptionally appealing - with her very beautiful eyes and her pretty mouth, she was unspeakably pleasing in almost all operas,” he wrote of her. She had a compass to be envied by any soprano and by any contralto for that matter. Mozart, who prided himself in writing melodies to fit singers “like a suit of clothes” gives her an Act I aria (‘As The Rock Remains Firm’) full of wide leaps from high to low and back, an abundance of coloratura, and a long trill to finish. The Fiordiligi here, Elizabeth Atherton, Victoria Simmonds (Dorabella), Allan Clayton (Ferrando) and Geoffrey Dalton (Don Alfonso) have all made successful appearances for the company during the last two years. Quirijn de Lang (Guglielmo) is making his ON debut. All will have been chosen carefully to produce a suitable blend. Tim Albery’s acclaimed 2004 production, set in the late 18th century Age of Reason, is sung in English.
11, 19 & 25 September, 14, 20, & 22 October, Grand Theatre, 46 New Briggate, LS1 6NZ, 0113 222 6222, 7pm, £10-£58
Posted on Monday 17th August 2009
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